The Honour of the Knights (First Edition) (22 page)

Estelle
was looking particularly cheery tonight. It was nice to see her
this way, especially after the disappointment she had suffered
following the termination of their involvement in the ATAF project.
She glanced at the men sitting around the low table and, catching
his eye, smiled at Dodds. He smiled back, then returned his
attention back to the game at hand.

“
So, why
’
d you boys join the Navy, then?”
Crew asked as they picked up the cards Enrique had dealt and
scrutinised them.

“
Well,” Dodds began, seeing the group’s
gaze fall on him. “I didn
’
t want to do the whole nine to five
thing, just didn
’
t interest me. I wanted to get out there and see and do
things, find a bit of adventure. Wanted to feel like I was a bit
more than some cog in a big old machine, that could work just as
well without me. So, at the end of the day it was either this or
spend my life looking after apples.”

He
watched their impassive expressions for a moment and then saw Ian’s
face split into a grin.

“
Ahhhh,” Ian said, with a chuckle. “So, you wanted to join the
Navy and become a hero!”

“
No,” Dodds said, sitting back up.

“
Yeah, you did,” Ian began to laugh. “You thought that if you
joined the Navy, you’d get to blow stuff up, go on daring missions,
earn tons of medals and get to sleep with lots of beautiful
women.”

“
No, I just wanted to do something different, you know – give
something back to the Confederacy; be a part of something special,”
Dodds said.

“
See,” Crew interrupted. “You
did
want to be a
hero.”

All four
men were laughing at Dodds. He turned toward Enrique and Chaz,
seeking support, but saw that they too were enjoying the roast;
Enrique shaking his head, Chaz wearing a thin smile.

Sure, I did want to be a hero, once
,
Dodds thought to himself.
But I’m back
here for different reasons now.

“
What about you?” Crew turned his attention
to Enrique, who shielded his cards in case there was some ploy
against him. Dodds looked around at his friend, curious as to how
Enrique might answer the question. Few outside the
Knights
’
small group were aware of
Enrique
’
s back
story. Dodds was not even sure if Enrique had ever told
Chaz.

When he was eight years old, Enrique and his family had been
returning from celebrating his older brother
’
s tenth birthday. They had been in
a car travelling along a motorway, when his father had noticed a
truck on the other side of the road driving erratically.
Enrique
’
s father
had taken precautions, deciding to slow and switch lanes. Just as
he had done so, the truck had swerved, crashing through the central
reservation and tipping onto its side, careening towards them. The
rear of the truck had clipped their car and sent it tumbling, at
speed, up the roadside embankment. It came to rest back on the
road, leaving a trail of broken and crumpled chassis parts and
shattered glass behind it.

Emergency services had been quick to arrive at the scene. His
mother, older brother and little sister were pulled from the
wreckage of their car, but had been pronounced dead at the scene.
Along with his father, Enrique had been air-lifted to the nearest
hospital. Despite all the efforts of the emergency teams, his
father had died en route, owing to massive internal bleeding.
Enrique had survived with a broken arm.

He was
raised by his grandfather, an ex-military and spiritual man, who
never failed to impress upon him the fact that someone was looking
out for him and that he had survived the crash for a reason.
Enrique took the words to heart and, spurred on by his grandfather,
had signed up for the Navy, in order to protect others and do his
best to save lives and keep the peace.

It was
not, however, a story that he would often tell.

“
Figured the Navy was something I would enjoy,” Enrique said
with a shrug. “And I was no good at anything else.”

“
Sounds like that should have been your reason,” Ian said,
laughing once again at Dodds.

“
You?” Crew looked at Chaz. So did Dodds and Enrique, more
intrigued than the man asking the questions.

“
I used to fly interplanetary shuttles and
landers,” Chaz said dismissively. “After nearly ten years of doing
that, I wanted to see and do something more. The police force
didn
’
t
interest me: too much corruption. So I applied to the Navy. So far,
I
’
ve been
stationed in more than ten different star systems over the past
eight years and learned to fly over half a dozen different
starfighters.”

“
Oh, okay,” Crew said. There was no sarcasm from Ian or McLeod
over the explanation; Chaz, for some reason, didn’t seem to warrant
it.

Chaz
took a slow pull from his bottle, saying nothing else.

“
Girlfriend, wife, kids?” McLeod said, rolling his hand
around.

“
None to speak of,” Chaz said after considerable
pause.

“
He’s like your mate,” Enrique supplied, nodding at the fourth
man of the group, who had contributed little to the conversation.
“Man of few words.”

The other three went on to explain their reasons for joining
up, how Crew’s parents disagreed with his career choice because he
was basically being granted a license to murder. He argued he was
being trained to protect and that the need to take a life was a
wholly real and necessary part of that duty. His parents had asked
if he ever raised a thought for the people in the ships he gunned
down. Ian chipped in and said that to him the enemy were faceless
anyway, and may as well be robots. He commented that no-one thought
about who they may have just killed when they destroyed their
fighter. It didn
’
t matter to them that it may have been
someone
’
s only
child, a mother, a father of two, a brother or sister. At the end
of the day, they were the enemy and that was all that
mattered.

“
Getting a bit deep,” Dodds said as the group lapsed into
silence, a sombre bubble seeming to have enclosed the group. The
cheerful mood was threatening to abandon them.

“
I think I
’
m sobering up,” Enrique
said.

“
Yes, let
’
s play,” McLeod pushed aside a
couple of cards. “Deal me two more.”

Enrique
leaned forward to the little table the deck rested on and, after
making a bit of a mess of the pile, managed to hand the man two
more cards.

“
Hey, no really, do you know what
I
’
ve been
hearing lately?”

Dodds
looked up from his cards for the source of the voice and realised
it belonged to the man who had remained relatively quiet for most
of the game; the one Enrique had called Shy Boy.

“
I
’
ve been told that there’s no
Imperial civil war,” Shy said.

“
What
’
s that?” Dodds said as the others
lowered their cards.

“
There is no war
,” Shy repeated, emphasising the statement a little more this
time.

“
You mean they
’
re just making it up?” said
Enrique.

“
Not entirely, but they are definitely
trying to cover something up. Something really
bad
’
s
happened over there and they don
’
t want people to find out about
it.”

“
You think they
’
ve been attacked by aliens?” asked
Ian excitedly, as the others pondered the statement.

“
No, not bloody aliens!” Shy said, turning to him with a look
of utter disdain.

“
You’ve got to admit, that’d be pretty cool,” Ian enthused,
ignoring him, his eyes glazing over. “Think of the architecture and
the tech and the culture; what they might look like and how they’d
speak; all their history and what we could learn from them.
Hey!”

McLeod
had reached over and plucked the beer bottle from the man’s hand.
“Explorers have been up and down the galaxy for decades and haven’t
found anything more advanced than bacteria and a few tiny little
microscopic plants,” he said. “So, can the fantasy; You won’t be
getting your fat fingers on any hot alien babes!”

“
Not aliens, then?” Dodds asked of Shy.

“
No, something else. But whatever it is,
the Confederation
’
s getting us all ready to defend
ourselves against some great invasion. Apparently, the Imperium has
been completely wiped out, except for a load of refugees.” From the
look on his face, he was being completely serious.

“
Who told you that?” McLeod asked, looking extremely
sceptical. “And whoever it was, tell them to stop smoking so much
crack and go get themselves a girlfriend.”

“
No, really. And something else I heard was
that the Navy
’
s been pumping money into some new top secret project. Some
powerful new weapon, apparently.”

Dodds
forced himself not to meet Enrique’s or Chaz’s eyes, nor say
anything, and instead concentrate on what the men were saying. He
could see, out of the corners of his eyes, that the other two were
doing the same.

“
What project?” Crew wanted to know.

“
That
’
s all I
’
ve been told, so it could be
anything,” Shy said with a shrug. “All I know is that
it
’
s costing them
an arm and a leg.”

“
Think they
’
re building another battleship to
replace
Dragon
?”

Shy shook his head. “Don
’
t know, but apparently
it
’
s the reason
why the orbital ring here hasn
’
t been finished.
They
’
ve diverted
all the funding that was meant to go here into that secret
project.” He took a swig of his beer and then pointed his bottle at
Crew. “And since you mention
Dragon
,
that goes along with the whole thing, too.”

“
How so?” Dodds asked, folding up his cards and putting them
face down on the table.

“
Well,
Dragon
‘s
been stolen, right? How do you do that? You
can
’
t just walk
on board and take the controls. You
’
d need a pretty big force to
achieve something like that, and that
’
s even before you get anywhere near
it. You
’
d have to
either be super human, or have someone on the inside.” He lowered
his voice before continuing, leaning a little closer to the table
so that the others could hear. “And Commodore Hawke, right,
how
’
d he survive?
I mean, it
’
s not
like the man would run off into the escape pods and leave his crew
to defend
Dragon
,
alone. I
’
m not exactly the
guy
’
s biggest
fan, but a captain goes down with his ship; and you all know that
he
’
d sooner die
on his feet, than curled up in a ball in a pod.”

“
Most likely he was wounded,” Crew said. “The crew chucked him
into the pod and shot him towards the nearest jumpgate. They needed
someone to get away, and top brass would be more likely to believe
a warning coming from him, than some delirious petty
officer.”

“
That doesn’t explain what really went on, though,” Dodds
said, somewhat disappointed.

Shy shrugged. “No-one knows exactly what was going on, but
from what I
’
ve
heard,
Dragon
was
out somewhere near the Imperial-Independent border. So
whatever
’
s going
down is getting closer.”

“
Look, can we stop with the stupid
conspiracy theories, please?” McLeod growled, as though he was
beginning to find his colleague
’
s words offensive. “There’s no
secret project, no mass invasion. Seriously, who
’
s telling you all this?”

“
Hey, I
’
m not saying anything else,” Shy
said, putting his hands up in submission. “I heard they killed the
last guy who went around gossiping.”